Last night at nine o’clock our office was talking about Twitter. Some of us like it, some of us don’t. We have Twitterers and non-Twitterers amongst us, though it is undisputed that the art of “tweeter” has entered our collective lexicon. Non-Twitter user Matthew Schnipper attended last night’s Animal Collective concert at the Grand Ballroom and decided to try out this Twitter business via text message to an unfortunate colleague. His collected tweets and some non-Twittered thoughts are after the jump. And if you are fiending for some more concrete Animal Collective internet business, you can watch their new video for totally badass major steamrolling jam, "My Girls" (via Pitchfork) and download the bootleg of the show at nyctaper as soon as their server recovers from the nerdpocalypse that shut it down.
- Right I am in a taxi it rules to not be at work
- I went to the bathroom before I left so if I get a seat I won’t have to give it up
- This is dumb. Can I keep it up? More to come or maybe not
- Unsure what thoughts are Twitter-able and which are not. Thinking about Juan Maclean album, my ear and how delete button close to “m” button.
- My favorite lyric on new Juan Maclean album is I get so emotional these days
- Now thinking about how I am not thinking about Animal Collective
- Natasha Leone here
- In elevator
- Ran into Busy and Melissa
- So many people and everyone freaking out. I missed Blues Control
- Leaning against a pole
- People cheering. Thinking about Jones Beach. Went there last summer some kids were playing guitar and we had to move our spot.
- Playing “In the Flowers.” It sounds like the record.
- Avey Tare maybe wearing cargo pants? Can’t tell
- Light show
- Couldn’t remember who other dude in the band was then remembered it was Panda Bear
- “Chariots of Fire” with “Fireworks” drums sounds insane
- Constantly sharing your immediate feelings is terrible
And thus ends my relationship with Twitter. Once I got to a public place it was embarrassing and awkward to constantly take my phone out of my back pocket and type in what I was thinking. But I was thinking so much. Twitter is bad because it crunches down vague thoughts and oblique notions into little flagpoles of fact. I don’t want to share what is not full. But I kept thinking about how from high in the balcony the house lights looked like crows. I told my friend and she agreed. I thought about how much a beer would cost. I wondered if anyone else knew some guy was playing extra keyboard parts off stage. The light show was nice and simple, occasionally slipping into rainbow colors that made me think of gay pride. When they brought in the drums for “Fireworks” slowly it was so brazen, the only time in the show where anything seemed more than organic. They were purposefully brutal and different than everything else, which existed on such a measured keel. Those drums are powerful. As the song built they transitioned out of it and Avey Tare started to play a soft, elegiac guitar patter over the drums and it sounded like a correct lineage to house music. When they played “My Girls” a guy who looked like the most regular guy I have ever seen—oversized but not big olive pants, ugly scarf, simple glasses—calmly walked out of his seat and into the large platform of the balcony and began to dance wildly with a completely ridiculous twirl and flail. I don’t even think he was smiling, just compelled to move. Even the woman with sunglasses on (at night, inside, in the dark) was moving. Earlier, from above, you could see individual puffs of marijuana when the house lights hit a sweet spot. There was none of that then. And though there wasn’t silence from the crowd, there was a certain kind of polite hush. Whatever the opposite sound of having your breath taken away is, it was that.
